The Bull­dogs ce­ment their home play­off spot, the first in more than a decade, Sports

Bull­dogs ce­ment sec­ond place spot with Chapel Hill win, will play Pick­ens County.

The Cedar­town Bull­dogs fin­ished their reg­u­lar sea­son big win­ners over Chapel Hill, ce­ment­ing their sec­ond place spot in Re­gion 5- 4A and will host their first play­off game since the early 2000’s.

The 9-1 Bull­dogs (5-1 5-4A) fin­ished off the Pan­thers in a huge sec­ond half with their 47-14 win head­ing into the play­offs with a big sec­ond half af­ter what head coach Doyle Kel­ley said could have been a bet­ter first half.

“We know what kind of team we’ve had all year,” Kel­ley said. “That was Cedar­town foot­ball, Bull­dog foot­ball. We chal­lenged them at half­time, and told them that they had a chance to be 9-1. And they wanted it.”

Chapel Hill didn’t make it easy for the Bull­dogs. They scored twice in the first half, first with a 96-yard re­turn on an in­ter­cep­tion by Ma­lik Le­blanc and again with three sec­onds left in the half as quar­ter­back KJ Bur­ton held onto the ball and ram­bled in from 23 yards out.

The Bull­dogs came back with shock­ers of their own in the sec­ond half, with Zaquan Fra­zier ran the open­ing kick­off of the sec­ond half back for a 75-yard touch­down.

On the kick­off fol­low­ing, the Bull­dogs were able to force a fum­ble and used the turnover as a chance to score, with quar­ter­back Trevon Wof­ford get­ting in from a yard out.

The Bull­dogs piled on two more scores from quar­ter­back Wof­ford and Mathis, with the run­ning back push­ing in for a 26-yard score and the quar­ter­back adding an­other 1- yard punch up the mid­dle to cross into the end zone.

But it was the de­fense that was chal­lenged more than any­one last Fri­day night.

“Our de­fense came back in the sec­ond half, and coach Ruark chal­lenged them at half­time. We didn’t make any ad­just­ments, we told them ex­actly what they were do­ing,” Kel­ley said. “We didn’t have any en­ergy at the be­gin­ning of the game, but they picked it up. Our de­fense played un­be­liev­able in the sec­ond half, and our of­fense came alive... Like I keep telling every­one, we have the two best co­or­di­na­tors in the state of Ge­or­gia.”

Cedar­town held Chapel Hill to just 104 yard on the night as they went into neg­a­tive yardage in the sec­ond half. Bur­ton went 3 for 9 for 45 yards on pass­ing be­fore he was knocked out of the game in the fourth quar­ter with an an­kle in­jury.

The Bull­dogs put up 390 to­tal yards of of­fense on the night, with Trevon Wof­ford serv­ing un­der cen­ter most of the game for the Bull­dogs go­ing 10 for 19 for 134 yards of of­fense. He com­bined with Tony Mathis and a squad of other run­ners for an ad­di­tional 256 yards on the night for the Bull­dogs.

Wof­ford and Mathis com­bined served up 6 touch­downs on the night on their own.

Cedar­town now heads into the Class 4A play­offs as they host Pick­ens County fol­low­ing their loss to the Her­itage Gen­er­als 4921.

They keep their spot since South­east Whit­field fell to an un­de­feated Ridge­land Pan­thers 49-0 on the road.

Kel­ley said the team will be tak­ing the up­com­ing play­off game like they have the rest of the sea­son: one game at a time.

“We’ve got to play four quar­ter,” he said. “The first two quar­ters we didn’t play well, but we came back in the sec­ond half and got the job done.”

Photo con­trib­uted by Gail Con­ner

Trevon Wof­ford makes a hand­off to Tony Mathis for a run up the mid­dle dur­ing Fri­day’s game against Chapel Hill.

Photo con­trib­uted by Gail Con­ner

Keshun Kent runs down­field for a big gain over Chapel Hill in the sec­ond half.